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Marketing (452 views - Classification & Specification)

Marketing is the study and management of exchange relationships. Marketing is the business process of creating relationships with and satisfying customers. With its focus on the customer, marketing is one of the premier components of business management.
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Definition

Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large".[4] The term developed from the original meaning which referred literally to going to market with goods for sale. From a sales process engineering perspective, marketing is "a set of processes that are interconnected and interdependent with other functions" of a business aimed at achieving customer interest and satisfaction".[5]

Philip Kotler defines marketing as "Satisfying needs and wants through an exchange process".[6]

The Chartered Institute of Marketing defines marketing as "the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably".[7] A similar concept is the value-based marketing which states the role of marketing to contribute to increasing shareholder value.[8] In this context, marketing can be defined as "the management process that seeks to maximise returns to shareholders by developing relationships with valued customers and creating a competitive advantage".[8]

Concept

The 'marketing concept' proposes that in order to complete the organizational objectives, an organization should anticipate the needs and wants of potential consumers and satisfy them more effectively than its competitors. This concept originated from Adam Smith's book The Wealth of Nations, but would not become widely used until nearly 200 years later.[12] Marketing and Marketing Concepts are directly related.

Given the centrality of customer needs and wants in marketing, a rich understanding of these concepts is essential:[13]

Needs: Something necessary for people to live a healthy, stable and safe life. When needs remain unfulfilled, there is a clear adverse outcome: a dysfunction or death. Needs can be objective and physical, such as the need for food, water, and shelter; or subjective and psychological, such as the need to belong to a family or social group and the need for self-esteem.

Wants: Something that is desired, wished for or aspired to. Wants are not essential for basic survival and are often shaped by culture or peer-groups.

Marketing research, conducted for the purpose of new product development or product improvement, is often concerned with identifying the consumer's unmet needs.[14] Customer needs are central to market segmentation which is concerned with dividing markets into distinct groups of buyers on the basis of "distinct needs, characteristics, or behaviors who might require separate products or marketing mixes." [15] Needs-based segmentation (also known as benefit segmentation) "places the customers' desires at the forefront of how a company designs and markets products or services." [16] Although needs-based segmentation is difficult to do in practice, it has been proved to be one of the most effective ways to segment a market.[17][14][18] In addition, a great deal of advertising and promotion is designed to show how a given product's benefits meet the customer's needs, wants or expectations in a unique way.[19]

Orientations

A marketing orientation has been defined as a "philosophy of business management." [20] or "a corporate state of mind" [21] or as an "organisation[al] culture" [22] Although scholars continue to debate the precise nature of specific orientations that inform marketing practice, the most commonly cited orientations are as follows:[23]

Product

A firm employing a product orientation is mainly concerned with the quality of its own product. A product orientation is based on the assumption that, all things being equal, consumers will purchase products of a superior quality. The approach is most effective when the firm has deep insights into customers and their needs and desires derived from research and (or) intuition and understands consumers' quality expectations and price they are willing to pay. For example, Sony Walkman and Apple iPod were innovative product designs that addressed consumers' unmet needs. Although the product orientation has largely been supplanted by the marketing orientation, firms practicing a product orientation can still be found in haute couture and in arts marketing.[24][25]

Sales

A firm using a sales orientation focuses primarily on the selling/promotion of the firm's existing products, rather than determining new or unmet consumer needs or desires. Consequently, this entails simply selling existing products, using promotion and direct sales techniques to attain the highest sales possible.[26] The sales orientation "is typically practiced with unsought goods." [27] One study found that industrial companies are more likely to hold a sales orientation than consumer goods companies.[28] The approach may also suit scenarios in which a firm holds dead stock, or otherwise sells a product that is in high demand, with little likelihood of changes in consumer tastes diminishing demand.

A 2011 meta analyses[29] has found that the factors with the greatest impact on sales performance are a salesperson's sales related knowledge (knowledge of market segments, sales presentation skills, conflict resolution, and products), degree of adaptiveness (changing behavior based on the aforementioned knowledge), role clarity (salesperson's role is to expressly to sell), cognitive aptitude (intelligence) and work engagement (motivation and interest in a sales role).

Production

A firm focusing on a production orientation specializes in producing as much as possible of a given product or service in order to achieve economies of scale or economies of scope. A production orientation may be deployed when a high demand for a product or service exists, coupled with certainty that consumer tastes and preferences remain relatively constant (similar to the sales orientation). The so-called production era is thought to have dominated marketing practice from the 1860s to the 1930s, but other theorists argue that evidence of the production orientation can still be found in some companies or industries. Specifically Kotler and Armstrong note that the production philosophy is "one of the oldest philosophies that guides sellers... [and] is still useful in some situations." [30]

Marketing

The marketing orientation is perhaps the most common orientation used in contemporary marketing. It is a customer-centric approach that involves a firm basing its marketing program around products that suit new consumer tastes. Firms adopting a marketing orientation typically engage in extensive market research to gauge consumer desires, use R&D to develop a product attuned to the revealed information, and then utilize promotion techniques to ensure consumers are aware of the product's existence and the benefits it can deliver.[31] Scales designed to measure a firm's overall market orientation have been developed and found to be relatively robust in a variety of contexts.[32]

Organizational orientation: In this sense, a firm's marketing department is often seen as of prime importance within the functional level of an organization. Information from an organization's marketing department would be used to guide the actions of other department's within the firm. As an example, a marketing department could ascertain (via marketing research) that consumers desired a new type of product, or a new usage for an existing product. With this in mind, the marketing department would inform the R&D department to create a prototype of a product/service based on consumers' new desires.

The production department would then start to manufacture the product, while the marketing department would focus on the promotion, distribution, pricing, etc. of the product. Additionally, a firm's finance department would be consulted, with respect to securing appropriate funding for the development, production and promotion of the product. Inter-departmental conflicts may occur, should a firm adhere to the marketing orientation. Production may oppose the installation, support and servicing of new capital stock, which may be needed to manufacture a new product. Finance may oppose the required capital expenditure, since it could undermine a healthy cash flow for the organization.

Mutually beneficial exchange: In a transaction in the market economy, a firm gains revenue, which thus leads to more profits/market share/sales. A consumer on the other hand gains the satisfaction of a need/want, utility, reliability and value for money from the purchase of a product or service. As no-one has to buy goods from any one supplier in the market economy, firms must entice consumers to buy goods with contemporary marketing ideals.

Societal marketing

A number of scholars and practitioners have argued that marketers have a greater social responsibility than simply satisfying customers and providing them with superior value. Instead, marketing activities should strive to benefit society's overall well-being. Marketing organisations that have embraced the societal marketing concept typically identify key stakeholder groups such as employees, customers, and local communities. They should consider the impact of their activities on all stakeholders. Companies that adopt a societal marketing perspective typically practice triple bottom line reporting whereby they publish social impact and environmental impact reports alongside financial performance reports. Sustainable marketing or green marketing is an extension of societal marketing.[33]

The marketing mix (the 4 Ps)

As a mnemonic for 'product', 'price', 'place' and 'promotion', the four Ps are often referred to as the marketing mix or the marketing program,[34] represent the basic tools which marketers can use to bring their products or services to market. They are the foundation of managerial marketing and the marketing plan typically devotes a section to each of these Ps.

Origins

During the 1940s, the discipline of marketing was in transition. Interest in the functional school of thought, which was primarily concerned with mapping the functions of marketing was waning while the managerial school of thought, which focussed on the problems and challenges confronting marketers was gaining ground.[35] The concept of marketers as "mixers of ingredients," was first introduced by James Culliton, a Professor at Harvard Business School.[36] At this time theorists began to develop checklists of the elements that made up the marketing mix, however, there was little agreement as to what should be included in the list. Many scholars and practitioners relied on lengthy classifications of factors that needed to be considered to understand consumer responses.[37] Neil Borden developed a complicated model in the late 1940s, based upon at least twelve different factors.[38]

Inspired by the idea of marketers as mixers of ingredients, Neil Borden one of Culliton's colleagues at Harvard, coined the phrase the marketing mix and used it wherever possible. According to Borden's own account, he used the term, 'marketing mix' consistently from the late 1940s.[39] For instance, he is on record as having used the term, 'marketing mix,' in his presidential address given to the American Marketing Association in 1953.[40] In the mid-1960s, Borden published a retrospective article detailing the early history of the marketing mix in which he claims that he was inspired by Culliton's idea of 'mixers', and credits himself with coining the term, 'marketing mix'.[41] Borden's continued and consistent use of the phrase, "marketing mix," contributed to the process of popularising the concept throughout the 1940s and 50s.

The "marketing mix" gained widespread acceptance with the publication, in 1960, of E. Jerome McCarthy's text, Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach which outlined the ingredients in the mix as the memorable 4 Ps, namely product, price, place and promotion.[42] The marketing mix is based upon four controllable variables that a company manages in its effort to satisfy the corporation's objectives as well as the needs and wants of a target market.[38] Once there is understanding of the target market's interests, marketers develop tactics, using the 4Ps, to encourage buyers to purchase product. The successful use of the model is predicated upon the degree to which the target market's needs and wants have been understood, and the extent to which marketers have developed and correctly deployed the tactics. Today, the marketing mix or marketing program is understood to refer to the "set of marketing tools that the firm uses to pursue its marketing objectives in the target market".[43]

Brief outline

The product aspects of marketing deal with the specifications of the actual goods or services, and how it relates to the end-user's needs and wants. The product element consists of product design, new product innovation, branding, packaging, labeling. The scope of a product generally includes supporting elements such as warranties, guarantees, and support. Branding, a key aspect of the product management, refers to the various methods of communicating a brand identity for the product, brand, or company.

This refers to the process of setting a price for a product, including discounts. The price need not be monetary; it can simply be what is exchanged for the product or services, e.g. time, energy, or attention or any sacrifices consumers make in order to acquire a product or service. The price is the cost that a consumer pays for a product—monetary or not. Methods of setting prices are in the domain of pricing science.

This refers to how the product gets to the customer; the distribution channels and intermediaries such as wholesalers and retailers who enable customers to access products or services in a convenient manner. This third P has also sometimes been called Place or Placement, referring to the channel by which a product or service is sold (e.g. online vs. retail), which geographic region or industry, to which segment (young adults, families, business people), etc. also referring to how the environment in which the product is sold in can affect sales.

Criticisms

Morgan, in Riding the Waves of Change (Jossey-Bass, 1988), suggests that one of the greatest limitations of the 4 Ps approach "is that it unconsciously emphasizes the inside–out view (looking from the company outwards), whereas the essence of marketing should be the outside–in approach". An inside-out approach is the traditional planning approach where the organisation identifies its desired goals and objectives which are often based around what has always been done. Marketing's task then becomes one of "selling" the organisation's products and messages to the "outside" or external stakeholders.[46] In contrast, an outside-in approach first seeks to understand the needs and wants of the consumer.[47]

From a model-building perspective, the 4 Ps has attracted a number of criticisms. Well-designed models should exhibit clearly defined categories that are mutually exclusive, with no overlap. Yet, the 4 Ps model has extensive overlapping problems. Some of the Ps are only defined in vague terms. Several authors stress the hybrid nature of the fourth P, mentioning the presence of two important dimensions, "communication" (general and informative communications such as public relations and corporate communications) and "promotion" (persuasive communications such as advertising and direct selling). Certain marketing activities, such as personal selling, may be classified as either promotion or as part of the place (i.e. distribution) element.[48] Some pricing tactics such as promotional pricing can be classified as price variables or promotional variables and therefore also exhibit some overlap.

Other important criticisms include that the marketing mix lacks a strategic framework and is therefore unfit to be a planning instrument, particularly when uncontrollable, external elements are an important aspect of the marketing environment.[49]

Modifications and extensions

To overcome the deficiencies of the 4 P model, some authors have suggested extensions or modifications to the original model. Extensions of the four P's include "people", "process", and "physical evidence" and are often applied in the case of services marketing[50] Other extensions have been found necessary in retail marketing, industrial marketing and internet marketing:

Services marketing needs to account for the unique characteristics of services (i.e. intangibility, perishability, heterogeneity and the inseparability of production and consumption). In order to recognize the special challenges involved in selling services, as opposed to goods, some authors advocate extending the model to 7 Ps for service industries by adding; Process – the way in which orders are handled, customers are satisfied and the service is delivered; Physical Evidence – is tangible evidence with which customers interact and with the potential to impact on the customer's service experience; People – service personnel and other customers with whom customers interact and form part of the overall service experience.[52]

Retail marketing needs to account for the unique facets of retail stores. A number of authors have argued for the inclusion of two new Ps, namely, Personnel and Presentation since these contribute to the customer's unique retail experience and are the principal basis for retail differentiation. Some scholars also recommend adding Retail Format (i.e. retail formula) since it contributes to customer expectations.[53] The modified retail marketing mix is often called the 6 Ps of retailing.[54][55]

Internet marketing presents both marketing practitioners and scholars with special challenges including: customer empowerment, new communication modes, real-time interactivity, access to global markets, high levels of market transparency and difficulty maintaining competitive advantages. While some scholars argue for an expanded marketing mix for internet marketing, most argue that entirely new models are required.[56]

Some authors cite a further P – Packaging – this is thought by many to be part of Product, but in certain markets (Japan, China for example) and with certain products (perfume, cosmetics) the packaging of a product has a greater importance – maybe even than the product itself.

Environment

The term "marketing environment" relates to all of the factors (whether internal, external, direct or indirect) that affect a firm's marketing decision-making/planning. A firm's marketing environment consists of three main areas, which are:

The macro-environment, over which a firm holds little control

The micro-environment, over which a firm holds a greater amount (though not necessarily total) control

The internal environment, which includes the factors inside of the company itself [57]

Macro

A firm's marketing macro-environment consists of a variety of external factors that manifest on a large (or macro) scale. These are typically economic, social, political or technological phenomena. A common method of assessing a firm's macro-environment is via a PESTLE (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, Ecological) analysis. Within a PESTLE analysis, a firm would analyze national political issues, culture and climate, key macroeconomic conditions, health and indicators (such as economic growth, inflation, unemployment, etc.), social trends/attitudes, and the nature of technology's impact on its society and the business processes within the society.

Micro

A firm's micro-environment comprises factors pertinent to the firm itself, or stakeholders closely connected with the firm or company.

By contrast to the macro-environment, an organization holds a greater degree of control over these factors.

Internal

A firms internal environment consists of factors inside of the actual company. These are factors controlled by the firm and they affect the relationship that a firm has with its customers. These include factors such as:

Labor

Inventory

Company Policy

Logistics

Budget

Capital Assets

Research

Marketing research is a systematic process of analyzing data which involves conducting research to support marketing activities, and the statistical interpretation of data into information. This information is then used by managers to plan marketing activities, gauge the nature of a firm's marketing environment and to attain information from suppliers.

A distinction should be made between marketing research and market research. Market research pertains to research in a given market. As an example, a firm may conduct research in a target market, after selecting a suitable market segment. In contrast, marketing research relates to all research conducted within marketing. Market research is a subset of marketing research.

Segmentation

Market segmentation consists of taking the total heterogeneous market for a product and dividing it into several sub-markets or segments, each of which tends to be homogeneous in all significant aspects.[59]

Target

Once a segment has been identified, a firm must ascertain whether the segment is beneficial for them to service.

The DAMP acronym (meaning Discernable, Accessible, Measurable and Profitable) are used as criteria to gauge the viability of a target market. The elements of DAMP are:

Discernable – how a segment can be differentiated from other segments.

Accessible – how a segment can be accessed via Marketing Communications produced by a firm

Measurable – can the segment be quantified and its size determined?

Profitable – can a sufficient return on investment be attained from a segment's servicing?

The next step in the targeting process is the level of differentiation involved in a segment serving. Three modes of differentiation exist, which are commonly applied by firms. These are:

Undifferentiated – where a company produces a like product for all of a market segment

Differentiated – in which a firm produced slight modifications of a product within a segment

Niche – in which an organisation forges a product to satisfy a specialised target market

Position

Positioning concerns how to position a product in the minds of consumers and inform what attributes differentiate it from the competitor's products.

A firm often performs this by producing a perceptual map, which denotes similar products produced in the same industry according to how consumers perceive their price and quality. From a product's placing on the map, a firm would tailor its marketing communications to suit meld with the product's perception among consumers, and its position among competitors' offering.

Communications

Marketing communications is an audience-centered activity designed to engage audiences and promote responses. It is defined by actions a firm takes to communicate with end-users, consumers, and external parties.

Sales promotion

An example is coupons or a sale. People are given an incentive to buy, but this does not build customer loyalty or encourage future repeat buys. A major drawback of sales promotion is that it is easily copied by competition. It cannot be used as a sustainable source of differentiation.

Public relations

Public relations (or PR, as an acronym) is the use of media tools in order to promote goodwill from a business or organization to a target market segment, or other consumers of a firm's good/service. PR stems from the fact that a firm cannot seek to antagonize or inflame its market base, due to incurring a lessened demand for its good/service. Organizations undertake PR in order to assure consumers, and to forestall negative perceptions towards it.

PR can span:

Interviews

Speeches/Presentations

Content

Corporate literature, such as financial statements, brochures, etc.

Publicity

Publicity involves attaining space in media, without having to pay directly for such coverage. As an example, an organization may have the launch of a new product covered by a newspaper or TV news segment. This benefits the firm in question since it is making consumers aware of its product, without necessarily paying a newspaper or television station to cover the event.

Mix

Marketing communications mix is used to reach, engage, provoke audience-centered conversations. It consists of 5 tools, which are 1)Advertising, 2)Sales & Promotion, 3)Public Relations, 4)Direct Marketing and 5)Personal Selling. The types of messages that are enhanced can be 1)Informational, 2)Emotional, 3)User-generated, or/and 4)Brand content. The last main component of MC mix is Media, which corresponds to the channel used to send the message. Media is divided into 3 categories, and these are media by 1) Form, 2) Source and 3) Functionality.

Planning

The area of marketing planning involves forging a plan for a firm's marketing activities. A marketing plan can also pertain to a specific product, as well as to an organisation's overall marketing strategy.

Generally speaking, an organisation's marketing planning process is derived from its overall business strategy. Thus, when top management are devising the firm's strategic direction/mission, the intended marketing activities are incorporated into this plan.

Process

Within the overall strategic marketing plan, the stages of the process are listed as thus:

Levels of marketing objectives within an organization

As stated previously, the senior management of a firm would formulate a general business strategy for a firm. However, this general business strategy would be interpreted and implemented in different contexts throughout the firm.

Corporate

Corporate marketing objectives are typically broad-based in nature, and pertain to the general vision of the firm in the short, medium or long-term.

As an example, if one pictures a group of companies (or a conglomerate), top management may state that sales for the group should increase by 25% over a ten-year period.

Strategic business unit

A strategic business unit (SBU) is a subsidiary within a firm, which participates within a given market/industry. The SBU would embrace the corporate strategy, and attune it to its own particular industry. For instance, an SBU may partake in the sports goods industry. It thus would ascertain how it would attain additional sales of sports goods, in order to satisfy the overall business strategy.

Functional

The functional level relates to departments within the SBUs, such as marketing, finance, HR, production, etc. The functional level would adopt the SBU's strategy and determine how to accomplish the SBU's own objectives in its market.

To use the example of the sports goods industry again, the marketing department would draw up marketing plans, strategies and communications to help the SBU achieve its marketing aims.

Product life cycle

The product life cycle (PLC) is a tool used by marketing managers to gauge the progress of a product, especially relating to sales or revenue accrued over time. The PLC is based on a few key assumptions, including:

A given product would possess introduction, growth, maturity, and decline stage

No product lasts perpetually on the market

A firm must employ differing strategies, according to where a product is on the PLC

Introduction

In this stage, a product is launched onto the market. To stimulate growth of sales/revenue, use of advertising may be high, in order to heighten awareness of the product in question.

Growth

The product's sales/revenue is increasing, which may stimulate more marketing communications to sustain sales. More entrants enter into the market, to reap the apparent high profits that the industry is producing.

Maturity

A product's sales start to level off, and an increasing number of entrants to a market produce price falls for the product. Firms may use sales promotions to raise sales.

Decline

Demand for a good begins to taper off, and the firm may opt to discontinue manufacture of the product. This is so, if revenue for the product comes from efficiency savings in production, over actual sales of a good/service. However, if a product services a niche market, or is complementary to another product, it may continue manufacture of the product, despite a low level of sales/revenue being accrued.

Customer focus

Many companies today have a customer focus (or market orientation). This implies that the company focuses its activities and products on consumer demands. Generally there are three ways of doing this: the customer-driven approach, the sense of identifying market changes and the product innovation approach.

In the consumer-driven approach, consumer wants are the drivers of all strategic marketing decisions. No strategy is pursued until it passes the test of consumer research. Every aspect of a market offering, including the nature of the product itself, is driven by the needs of potential consumers. The starting point is always the consumer. The rationale for this approach is that there is no point spending R&D funds developing products that people will not buy. History attests to many products that were commercial failures in spite of being technological breakthroughs.[60]

A formal approach to this customer-focused marketing is known as SIVA[61] (Solution, Information, Value, Access). This system is basically the four Ps renamed and reworded to provide a customer focus.

The SIVA Model provides a demand/customer centric version alternative to the well-known 4Ps supply side model (product, price, place, promotion) of marketing management.

Product

→

Solution

Promotion

→

Information

Price

→

Value

Placement

→

Access

Product focus

In a product innovation approach, the company pursues product innovation, then tries to develop a market for the product. Product innovation drives the process and marketing research is conducted primarily to ensure that profitable market segment(s) exist for the innovation. The rationale is that customers may not know what options will be available to them in the future so we should not expect them to tell us what they will buy in the future. However, marketers can aggressively over-pursue product innovation and try to overcapitalize on a niche. When pursuing a product innovation approach, marketers must ensure that they have a varied and multi-tiered approach to product innovation. It is claimed that if Thomas Edison depended on marketing research he would have produced larger candles rather than inventing light bulbs. Many firms, such as research and development focused companies, successfully focus on product innovation. Many purists doubt whether this is really a form of marketing orientation at all, because of the ex post status of consumer research. Some even question whether it is marketing.

An emerging area of study and practice concerns internal marketing, or how employees are trained and managed to deliver the brand in a way that positively impacts the acquisition and retention of customers (employer branding).

The Economist reported a recent conference in Rome on the subject of the simulation of adaptive human behavior.[62] It shared mechanisms to increase impulse buying and get people "to buy more by playing on the herd instinct." The basic idea is that people will buy more of products that are seen to be popular, and several feedback mechanisms to get product popularity information to consumers are mentioned, including smart-cart technology and the use of Radio Frequency Identification Tag technology. A "swarm-moves" model was introduced by a Florida Institute of Technology researcher, which is appealing to supermarkets because it can "increase sales without the need to give people discounts."

Marketing is also used to promote business' products and is a great way to promote the business.

Other recent studies on the "power of social influence" include an "artificial music market in which some 14,000 people downloaded previously unknown songs" (Columbia University, New York); a Japanese chain of convenience stores which orders its products based on "sales data from department stores and research companies;" a Massachusetts company exploiting knowledge of social networking to improve sales; and online retailers who are increasingly informing consumers about "which products are popular with like-minded consumers" (e.g., Amazon, eBay).